The 3dsMax-friendly BVH release of CMU's motion capture database

Daz Studio / Poser / Carrara users: you probably want this page instead.
MotionBuilder users: you probably want this page instead.

May 2009: This page has the download links to a 3dsMax-friendly .BVH release of 2548 human motions from the Carnegie-Mellon Graphics Lab Motion Capture Database. This is a large set of professionally-captured human motions of a wide variety of types, suitable for use in animation software, which were previously available only in Motionbuilder-friendly and Poser-friendly versions.

Advantages of this release over the original Carnegie-Mellon data:

- Very easy and fast to use with 3dsMax Biped.

- Joint renaming: As many joints as possible have been renamed to be compatible with 3dsMax's BVH import capability for Biped.

- Easy retargeting: since 3dsMax Biped allows biped-to-biped retargeting even across different Biped skeleton setups, it's now possible to use the CMU motion data with arbitrary Biped skeletons, at least within 3dsMax. This is a huge win, because it means that you don't have to create a skeleton whose bone setup matches that of the original CMU data.

- Base pose modification: 3dsMax requires an unusual skeleton BVH "base pose" aka "zero pose". For the 3dsMax-friendly release I've adjusted the underlying dataset to put the zero pose into the appropriate arms-down position. Numerous adjustments to the keyframes on the arms were then required to handle the change in rotation axes that happens when you shift the underlying BVH zero pose.

- Hand-to-wrist keyframe migration: This 3dsMax-friendly BVH release shifts keyframes from the "hand" joints onto the "wrist" joints, making this data available to Max. 3dsMax BVH import doesn't support both "wrist" and "hand" joints, so without this datashift, the wrist rotations of the original capture would end up lost.

- Index files: The release includes consolidated indices that list the motion filenames and their descriptions. Both spreadsheet and word processor friendly index files are available.

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TUTORIAL VIDEO: You can download the full 1024x768 video (48MB, .mov format) or view it on Vimeo.

DOWNLOAD LINKS AND RELATED FILES:

(Download problems? MediaFire can be flaky or overloaded sometimes, since this is "free download space, I get what I pay for." If MediaFire refuses to start a file download, try waiting 24 hours and then try again. If that doesn't work, email me directly with the name of the file and the date and time you had problems. I can then try to open a support ticket with MediaFire.)

("Missing directories"? Actually, the CMU dataset does not include a full set of directories numbered 1 through 144. There are some gaps in the numbering. For example, there are no motion directories numbered 95-101 or 129-130. So if it looks like you're "missing some directories", actually you aren't, as long as you download all of the ZIP files below.)

OTHER FILES:
- READMEFIRST file included with each of the above .zip files
- HOW-TO-USE-THESE-FILES tutorial file
- 3dsMax BVH import specification from Autodesk
- Here's the full motions list (word processor version), also included with each of the above .zip files

Contact information:
Bruce Hahne, site editor, cgspeed.com
"Making hobbyist animating easier, cheaper, and faster"
Email: hahne at prismnet dot com

(Disclaimer: I don't work for AutoDesk, nor am I affiliated with Carnegie-Mellon University. The BVH conversion release is provided as-is, without support or guarantees.)

This web page is also reachable via http://tinyurl.com/dk8n5z